DARIEN -- The Altamaha River flows through this small coastal Georgia town about a block from the office of the Altamaha Riverkeeper, where for more than a decade Deborah Sheppard has waged war with a pulpwood plant about 45 miles upstream.
When Sheppard says the name of the company, Rayonier, she bites it off like a cuss word. The company, she says, is "polluting the Altamaha River in an unacceptable way. It continues to pollute the Altamaha in an unacceptable way. And we're trying to stop that."
A consent order signed by Rayonier and state regulators 14 months ago was designed to clean up the plant's dark discharge, but it hasn't brought peace with Sheppard's group. Altamaha Riverkeeper contends the order is too lenient, and it plans to protest the plant's discharge permit when Rayonier seeks renewal later this year.
The company and state Environmental Protection Division say Rayonier is complying with the order.
Sheppard, an energetic 57-year-old mother and executive director of the Riverkeeper, said cleaning up the Altamaha is a moral obligation. Her group claims about 1,200 members. To a great extent, it owes its existence to the fight with Rayonier over its Jesup plant.
The plant, which employs about 800 people, has operated on the banks of the Altamaha since the 1950s. After complaints and an investigation by the EPD, Rayonier signed the consent order with EPD in December 2010. It called for a schedule to incrementally reduce the color of its discharge by two-thirds over eight years, at a cost of as much as $75 million.
The order noted that "Rayonier does not agree with EPD's conclusion that its facility has a reasonable potential to violate" water standards.
Sheppard and her group claim Rayonier has been ruining the Altamaha for years with a black discharge that still stains the river for miles and produces a foul odor. The discharge is a byproduct known in the industry as "black liquor, " a concentration of the natural tannins in wood released during processing.
EPD Director Jud Turner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the agency is "pleased with the timeline" in the consent order, adding: "They've dealt with 30 percent of the color issue, and I think they're on the way to meeting the schedule."
That's not fast enough for Sheppard's group and some people who live, boat and fish along the Altamaha, which flows through miles of undeveloped forest between Jesup and the wetlands on the coast.
Brad Yoemans used to run a fish camp on the river but said the plant discharge destroyed his business. The color and the smell "have ruined all the fishing, " he said, recalling that he once earned a living catching eel, shad and 300-pound Atlantic sturgeon migrating up the Altamaha.
"Now there ain't nothing left but mullets and catfish, " he said.
Yoemans took a reporter, photographer and Sheppard on a boat tour of about 2 miles of the river above and below the Rayonier discharge. That day the river was tinged darker downstream by the Rayonier discharge bubbling up from submerged pipes. But there was no foul smell.
Turner said odor is a matter of opinion, and not regulated by EPD. The Clean Water Act, which states enforce, measures water pollution by chemical content and temperature and pH. Odor isn't a scientific measure of pollution, said Turner.
"I think if you talk to 10 people you'll get 10 different answers, " Rayonier spokesman Charles Hood said. "Some think odor is a problem at the plant, and some don't. There is a sulfur smell around the pulping process, but whether you smell it I think is personal perception."
Mac Goddard, a 70-year-old Macon preacher, said he caught fish on the Altamaha two years ago that smelled like a paper mill and were inedible. He hasn't been back since. "It's a shame, " he said, "because it's such a beautiful place to fish."
Hood, asked about such claims, said, "I really don't know that we have any way of determining the validity of the accusation. It's a personal perception."
Sheppard said her group hired Canadian expert Neil McCubbin, who said Rayonier could quickly clean up its discharge with technology that has existed for years. McCubbin, a pulpwood processing engineer, said the process would be expensive but wouldn't take eight years.
"You could build a plant of their size and complexity from the ground up, in a Brazilian jungle, in three years, " says McCubbin. "It's not about technology. It's about the money."
Hood said it's not that simple: When the company changes the way it processes and cleans up its discharge, the chemical composition changes in the pulp it produces for products ranging from oil filters to diapers. Its clients have to market test products made with the new pulp.
"That can take two years" and delays the phasing in of the new technology, Hood said.
Sheppard and her group will have a chance to weigh in this year, Turner said, when the EPD asks for public comment on renewing Rayonier's discharge permit.
"That would make us very happy, " said Sheppard. "Because then that would engage the public -- and there's a chance to fix the problem."
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